


Spin The World Again

by hostagesfic



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Domestic, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hostagesfic/pseuds/hostagesfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when he looks at Zayn these days, he thinks <i>you feel it too, still a little bit empty after everything.</i> Zayn still looks as hungry for the world as he had at fifteen, before he’d even learned to recognize it in himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spin The World Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for one of the fantastic prompts we got during a round of prompting on our tumblr! The prompt was "Zayn/Danny, first kiss." We took a few liberties with it, but we hope you enjoy it, anon with great taste! Title from [this](http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2013/01/the-turning-of-sphere.html) IWTFY entry, which is giving us a lot of Zayn/Danny feels at the moment.

Danny puts up another still-tacky fingerpaint-on-butcher-paper masterpiece on the refrigerator. It proclaims loudly in yellow acrylic that “I <3 YOU MR REEC,” and is only the newest in the line of take home notes his class has gifted him with. It’s the last week of the term, and Danny’s glad for the upcoming hols, but he has to admit he’ll miss the little buggers, too. He glances around the empty kitchen and the deceptively quiet house. He’s not looking forward to what the hols bring with them; cabin fever and extended exposure to an aimless Zayn.

Getting out the bag of pita and a tupperware of minced chicken, digging through the fridge for the leftover sauce he knows they saved from their take out the night before, Danny tries not to think about what the said best mate is getting up to somewhere in their house at this very moment. It’s only been a month since One Direction made their time off official, but since then Zayn’s cycled through Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief two and a half times and littered the house with more half-finished canvases than they really have space for.

Danny thinks maybe they need to find something to do over the upcoming weeks, more than the lazy art and films and smoking they’d filled their early twenties with. Sometimes, when he looks at Zayn these days, he thinks _you feel it too, still a little bit empty after everything._ Zayn still looks as hungry for the world as he had at fifteen, before he’d even learned to recognize it in himself. (Danny, of course, had seen it all along.)

It’s true. Zayn doesn’t know how to turn off any more, not after nearly a decade of the lights and buzz of One Direction. Danny, for his part, can still feel that gnawing itch of insufficiency, even when he’s done more- a degree, a job where he doesn’t despise going to work every day, a generous paycheck, a dog- with his life than he thought he could eight years ago. Zayn had been the one who didn’t laugh at his early-twenties’ crisis, told him that he could do “whatever, mate, and you’d be brill. But maybe look at uni? You could take a few classes, anyway, see what you like.” Now he’s staring down his thirtieth birthday and wondering what happened to the two lads with awful haircuts who spent their after-school hours reading crumpled thrift store comics and laughing at Ant’s inability to pronounce the word “lingerie.”

As if he’s been summoned, Ant lumbers into the kitchen, bumps shoulders with him as he looks into the fridge. “He’s on the roof again,” he informs Danny, wryly, and grabs a beer out of the door, leans up against the counter. “He won’t come down.”

“What do y’mean, won’t come down?” Danny rolls his eyes. “He’ll get hungry.”

Ant raises an eyebrow. “He’s been up there since breakfast. Think the only thing he’s eaten is the paper off a carton of fags.”

“Jesus,” Danny says, and finally closes the refrigerator door. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

Shrugging, Ant nabs a pita and moves out of Danny’s range. “Telling you now. I figured he’d come down, an’ I didn’t wanna text you at work. ‘Oh, y’best mate’s bein’ mental again, shall I call the fire brigade to fetch ‘im down.’ Yeah.” He snorts.

“Why do you even still live here?” Danny calls out from where he’s already halfway down the hall. He doesn’t mean it in a malicious way; it’s just sort of become a thing he does, and Ant will snark right back, but this time Danny doesn’t stick around long enough to hear it.

It’s only when he’s at the top of the stairs and flipping the switch for the door to the roof that Danny realizes he might’ve been wise to bring the sandwich supplies with him for this. Going back for them now isn’t really an option, though, not when he can see Zayn’s back, hunched over on the far side of the roof, smoke wisping away from his silhouette in the twilight.

He steps onto the roof with a sigh and makes his way over carefully. Zayn’s chosen to perch on the sloped bit of the roof beyond the half wall of the overlook, and it’s not likely that they’ll manage to slide off and break all eight limbs, they’ve done this a thousand times before, but Danny doesn’t like taking a larger risk than necessary. He folds himself up next to Zayn and looks over.

“Hey,” Zayn mumbles, around a cigarette. His hands are twitching, rubbing his folded up calves. Danny doesn’t really want to know how many smokes he’s gone through today.

“Hey,” he says back. “‘Vassup?”

“Louis called.” Zayn purses his lips around the fag and his whole face seems pinched. Danny reaches over and plucks the cigarette from between his lips, flicks it over the edge of the roof. It catches on the gutter and Zayn stares at it like he might follow for a split second. Then he shakes his head and blinks. “They wanna push the tour forward, like. Start in September instead of October, add some dates in America.”

Danny can feel his eyebrows raising, the tension in his own forehead. He rubs the back of his knuckles across his brow. “Thought that’s what you wanted.”

“It is.”

Danny watches Zayn flick his thumb against the side of the lighter in a loose rhythm, watches his knees jostle. “So?”

“So,” Zayn says, with the weight of Atlas, “What if it’s... different? What if it doesn’t work th’way it used to?”

“I can’t believe that,” Danny says honestly. He thinks Zayn probably doesn’t either, but it’s still a scary thought. Danny’s used to those questions by now, years of watching his best mate from tv screens and youtube videos, photos of Zayn on a different stage across the world every night. But perhaps it’s the first time for Zayn, and Danny aches for him. “And if it is, different... ‘s not all bad, is it? You lot changed loads from th’time you were on X factor. But it still worked.”

Zayn looks over at him, and Danny forces himself to meet his eyes, not get distracted cataloguing the shadows under them, the hollows of his cheeks, the rough stubble he hasn’t groomed in days. “Yeah,” Zayn finally agrees, and he sounds as tired as he looks.

Danny holds out his arm, and Zayn smiles like relief. He shuffles closer on the cold roof shingles, ducks to huddle close to Danny’s chest under his arm. “How was work?” he asks, and Danny curls his fingers around Zayn’s shoulder, feels the way he’s trembling.

“Work was fine,” he says. “Got a new piece’a fine art f’your collection.”

“Yeah,” Zayn murmurs, distractedly, and Danny says, “I’ve been doing this exercise, right, where I get the kids to look at a famous painting for a minute, and-”

Zayn rises up from under his arm, turning and looking down at Danny for the briefest of seconds. Danny pauses, about to ask what’s wrong, and then Zayn’s eyes close.

Danny’s first thought is- _he’s going to do it. He’s going to fall off this fucking roof and he’ll break his bloody neck and I’ll have to fill out the police report and I’ll never get to see the way he looks at sunrise when he’s only smoked his first cigarette of the day and had a cup of tea again_. And Zayn’s mouth opens on his.

Danny makes a small noise of relief against Zayn’s lips, fingers catching his elbow and digging in tight, I won’t let you fall. He opens his eyes, wondering when he’d closed them, and Zayn is staring back at him. “What?” Danny asks.

Zayn licks his lips. He looks nervous, and the shaking in his hands on Danny’s shoulders feels more like hope than nicotine or spring chill. “Not all bad, is it?”

Danny reels him in tight, the two of them all hands and mouths clutching at each other for dear life. Zayn’s lighter skitters away down the roof.

It’s not bad at all.


End file.
